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OT: Minor entry for the engineering hall of errors

My wife got a new Acer mini desktop for Christmas. It's a great little machine and was a very good price. It runs Windows 7 home 64 bit. A feature of Win 7 is that it can use a fast flash card as cache ram to increase speed. The feature is called "Ready Boost". I bought a class 10 16 gig flash card to stick in it for that purpose. It reduces disk accesses and allows simultaneous data transfers from the card and the hard drive to increase performance.

The computer has a card reader behind a little door on the front. The card stays in place all the time for this purpose.

So I stick in the card and close the door. I instantly realize that there is an engineer out there with a little less foresight than most.

The panel only needed to be moved back about 0.2 inches and the door would close.

The machine was most likely engineered without Win7 in mind. There are other OSes out here. The design works well for the USB ports, since you do not want people to close the cover with the USB in place.

If they DID design it to have the card permanently in place, they may have just installed the wrong type of SD dock. There are two basic types of sd card dock. One allows the card to be swallowed and it latches in place. The other leaves enough sticking out that you can grab it and pull it out. It looks like they may have assumed one and got the other.

Either way, the solution is simple. A file, end mill, sandpaper or grinder will remove .2 from the card. The electronics seldom extend all the way to the end of the card. OR.... a 1/8 inch end mill will make a slot in the door for the card to slip through.

Regardless of the OS the door should still be closable. It makes both the door and the card reader vulnerable to damage.

Originally Posted by Evan

The computer has a card reader behind a little door on the front. The card stays in place all the time for this purpose.

Per your original post, it's a problem mainly because you want to use a Win7 feature. If I'm not using Win7, then I am not using that feature. If I am not using that feature, then there is no requirement to have the card mounted 24x7. I agree that there is no reason not to leave it in there 24x7. It's just not normal for 'removable media' to be permanently installed.

An equally valid design decision would be to assume that the front panel is for temporary connections. As such, having a door that will not close when in use would keep you from forgetting where you left that dinky little card when you want to snap some photos.

ReadyBoost came out in Vista. I use it but there really does not seem to be much of a difference, at least with the stuff I do.

The case is a pretty generic case and the card slot was just thrown in there for people to read off their cameras and stuff. I am sure it was never intended for putting a card in there and leaving it for the readyboost stuff. I use a little USB drive that fits on a spare internal USB header on the main board.